I bought an e-bike in November 2020, it was life-changing, and now I have 4 (pedal-assist, not throttle). I'm documenting my reflections about the e-bike space here, in the hope it will help others.
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: bike-sharer → bike-owner → e-bike maniac
: weights between 35-60lbs, ranges from 25-130mi, prices from $1900-$7000 ($2500-$8000 incl. gear)
: great all-around / starter / city e-bike
: smallest fold, most portable, great all around
: large cargo capacity, folds up for easy storage
: light, fast, long-range
: higher top speed – and acceleration – make a big difference in traffic
: a lot more people can get around quickly+comfortably on ebikes
: ebikes are as fast as cars in urban environments; can solve congestion and parking issues
: high mobility per unit space; combine with other modes (trains, buses, ferries)
: parking takes too much space in cities, and is heavily subsidized; bike parking is 5-10x more efficient
: the average car cost could fund e-bikes for 10 families
:
: basically any grocery run, and a surprising number of bulk item moves, can be done via e-bike
: easy to carry 1 or 2 kids by e-bike
: I get groceries by e-bike and it's great
: I moved across town – with 2wks of stuff – by ebike
: cars make streets miserable for everyone not in a car; doing this to 100% of streets is extreme, and terrible policy.
: easy way to get used to city biking/scooting (if unfamiliar)
: rent a few types of bikes before buying one
:
: can't hurt, but often used to blame/criminalize cyclists for infrastructure/engineering problems
: the more the better
: similar to helmets; good practice, but often discussed unfairly
: , , all useful
: generally not possible (might work with e-brompton); generally easy/possible
: $83/mo (incl. maintenance/theft/insurance coverage), $3k outright
: popular under $2k
: 10-20% a bike's cost in add-ons can make it 10x more useful
: I use helmet with lights built in
: starting point for carrying bags' worth of stuff on rides
: get weight off of you and onto the bike, where it rolls
: bags that hang from sides of back rack; can be quite large, very useful
: smaller bags up around your handlebars for essentials
: small/medium bags attached to the frame
: medium bags on top of back rack or behind+underneath seat
: phone mounted up front (e.g. w/ turn-by-turn directions) is surprisingly useful; I use .
: , , , ,
: (medium weight, decent security), (lighter / more clearance but weaker), (compact+light extra security layer)
: , rear-view mirrors ( ), ,
: ,
: are popular + good
: easier+better than you think, $200 of gear solves cold down to ≈25ºF
: , , and
: I use a and , in , to
:
:
: robust recording app (resumes after phone crashes), good small-circle social network, good open data posture
: similar to Strava, emphasis on route planning/sharing, UX is clunkier
: cool app on top of Strava, providing stats/viz about places you've been and places you might still like to explore
: dealing with videos afterward is its own adventure
are pretty hard to deal with; telemetry data is often not recorded correctly, and the GoPro software ecosystem is a mess
: / Samsungs, palm-sized
: never worry about SD-card capacity in-camera (there's enough to worry about when the data comes off the camera)
: cheap+easy cloud storage; good option for archival video storage
: unfortunately necessary to do anything with action-camera videos
: I've posted some ride videos to
